Abdullah Gül in the context of Ahmet Necdet Sezer

⭐ Core Definition: Abdullah Gül

Abdullah Gül (/ɡuːl/ GOOL, Turkish: [abduɫˈɫah ˈɟyl]; born 29 October 1950) is a Turkish politician who served as the president of Turkey from 2007 to 2014. He previously served for four months as Prime Minister from 2002 to 2003, and concurrently served as both Deputy Prime Minister and as Foreign Minister between 2003 and 2007. He is currently a member of the Advisory Panel for the President of the Islamic Development Bank.

Advocating staunch Islamist political views during his university years, Gül became a Member of Parliament for Kayseri in 1991 and was re-elected in 1995, 1999, 2002, and 2007. Initially a member of the Islamist Welfare Party, Gül joined the Virtue Party in 1998 after the former was banned for anti-secular activities. When the party split into hardline Islamist and modernist factions in 2000, Gül joined fellow party member Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in advocating the need for reform and moderation. He ran against serving leader Recai Kutan for the Virtue Party leadership at a time when Erdoğan was banned from holding political office. As the candidate for the modernist camp, he came second with 521 votes while Kutan won 633. He co-founded the moderate Justice and Development Party (AKP) with Erdoğan in 2001 after the Virtue Party was shut down in the same year, while hardline conservative members founded the Felicity Party instead.

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👉 Abdullah Gül in the context of Ahmet Necdet Sezer

Ahmet Necdet Sezer (Turkish: [ahˈmed nedʒˈdet seˈzæɾ]; born 13 September 1941) is a Turkish statesman and judge who served as the president of Turkey from 2000 to 2007. Previously, he was president of the Constitutional Court of Turkey from January 1998 to May 2000. The Grand National Assembly of Turkey elected Sezer as president in 2000 after Süleyman Demirel's seven-year term expired. He was succeeded by Abdullah Gül in 2007.

Following his legal career, Sezer became a candidate for the presidency with the joint support of many political parties in Parliament. Following the 2000 presidential election, he took an ardent secularist approach on issues such as the headscarf, holding the view that secularism in Turkey was under threat. A quarrel between Sezer and Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit in 2001 led to a financial meltdown, attributed to the weakness of the coalition government as well as to the large debt owed to the International Monetary Fund.

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⭐ Core Definition: Abdullah Gül
👉 Abdullah Gül in the context of Ahmet Necdet Sezer
Abdullah Gül in the context of 2007 Turkish presidential election

Abdullah Gül in the context of 2007 Turkish presidential election

The 2007 Turkish presidential election refers to two attempts to elect the country's 11th president, to succeed Ahmet Necdet Sezer. The most likely candidate for president was Abdullah Gül. Turkey's presidential office is regarded as the guardian of the country's secular system; the fact that Gül's wife wears the Islamic headscarf, as well as his own history in political Islam, turned the elections into a political crisis.

The first attempt consisted of the first rounds on 27 April and its repeat on 6 May after Turkey's constitutional court annulled the first round on 27 April. The constitutional court decided that a quorum of two-thirds was necessary, which was impossible without opposition support. Both first rounds were almost entirely boycotted by opposition MPs to disable the voting to start. Therefore, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) was unsuccessful in electing its candidate, foreign minister Abdullah Gül. AKP then called a snap election which was held on 22 July 2007. The general elections saw it returned to government with a larger proportion of the vote. Subsequently, Gül was renominated and was finally elected in the third round of the second attempt of presidential election. The first round of this voting was on 20 August, while a second was on 24 August and a third was on 28 August. There was a quorum this time, since some opposition parties, most importantly the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), did not boycott the election.

View the full Wikipedia page for 2007 Turkish presidential election

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